Abstract

A goal for future robotic technologies is to advance autonomy capabilities for independent and collaborative decision-making with human team members during complex operations. However, if human behavior does not match the robots’ models or expectations, there can be a degradation in trust that can impede team performance and may only be mitigated through explicit communication. Therefore, the effectiveness of the team is contingent on the accuracy of the models of human behavior that can be informed by transparent bidirectional communication which are needed to develop common ground and a shared understanding. For this work, we are specifically characterizing human decision-making, especially in terms of the variability of decision-making, with the eventual goal of incorporating this model within a bidirectional communication system. Thirty participants completed an online game where they controlled a human avatar through a 14 × 14 grid room in order to move boxes to their target locations. Each level of the game increased in environmental complexity through the number of boxes. Two trials were completed to compare path planning for the condition of known versus unknown information. Path analysis techniques were used to quantify human decision-making as well as provide implications for bidirectional communication.

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Acknowledgment

Research was sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory and was accomplished under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-10-2-0016. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Laboratory or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation herein.